


Our Beginning

by waterloosunset123



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Case Fic, Doctor John Watson, First Time, Fluff, John Asks Questions, LOTS of Questions, M/M, Romance, Sherlock Leaves John a Letter, St. Bart's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:51:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1230508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterloosunset123/pseuds/waterloosunset123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of locked-room mysteries leading to Holmes and Watson's first time. Watson's P.O.V.<br/>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's style; set in the modern era (BBC 'Sherlock').</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Beginning

A comfortable silence greeted me as I awoke that morning. I extended my hand towards the left night-table whereupon I found my phone and took notice of the hour: one quarter to seven. At this time, I had to get ready, as the first appointment for my consult is at eight-thirty. It was Saturday but I was on call at St. Bart’s until three. I had taken a few shifts a month in traumatology (programmed surgeries and emergencies, mostly) and, thus far, it was every bit as exciting as I remembered it. I realise, reader, I do not usually record scenes from my own life as I record the cases of the magnificent career of my friend Sherlock Holmes, but these were peculiar circumstances, indeed. Life-changing, as meeting him was. I placed my feet on the ground, steadied myself, and proceeded to walk about the room, noting how the detective himself might have deduced the events of the previous night even more quickly than he could remember them. My right boot was tumbled next to the door frame. My left, inside the open wardrobe. Holmes’ own leather dress shoes were scattered at opposite sides of the room, one next to the bed, and one next to the wardrobe door on the other side. There was my own shirt, now at my feet, lacking the two top buttons (the third was hanging by a thin silk thread and  it would not hold out much longer). His suit jacket and my sweater were hanging precariously from the foot of the bed. My trousers and his crumpled silk shirt were on the armchair at the right side of the bed. His trousers inside the open wardrobe. Undergarments disdainfully discarded and kicked under the bed. The lustful thrill of the memory was a whisper in my mind. Only a whisper. Because I would not allow myself to remember vividly. Not while the careful thought of it could ignite me whilst on a work morning. The lust had been utterly overwhelming, shaking us to the core, but would remain only a whisper, for now. I decided to bathe and dress. Inside the shower, I discovered a small bruise with a bite mark on my right shoulder, and, as I dressed, on the mirror were revealed three or four short, visible nail scratches on my back. They stubbornly tugged at my resolve and self-control, but I refused to falter and give in to the sensory memories rising in my mind. Returning to the room, almost fully dressed, I stood at the threshold. I could see him now: a head of black hair and a body covered by bedclothes, facing away from me, curled up in a ball that accentuated every desirable curve. I picked up my clothes to bring them to the laundry basket, and put on my boots.

  _We returned relatively late the previous night. It must have been at about nine-thirty or ten o’clock. After an afternoon of investigating, the string of murders, now with five victims all over London (the last one rather close to Baker Street), was no closer to being solved. Still, baffling, locked-room mysteries could entertain him to no end._

 His coat on his armchair in the sitting room. His scarf on the floor next to the couch. After having cooked myself breakfast, I prepared two cups of tea, ignoring his anticipated rejection of the one made for him, and placed both cups on the kitchen table, beginning to partake in mine.

  _Frustration had gotten the better of him. He had bullied his violin out of hours of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven and Sibelius, the frenzy of the music filling Baker Street to the brim, and fallen down on his armchair at around one o’clock, undoubtedly experiencing a mental block regarding the murders, whilst I remained in front of the case wall, attempting to make some kind of reasonable connection amongst the seemingly unrelated. His food was untouched. So was mine, for a change._

_“Holmes,” said I, seeing him start to pace about the room, exasperated and erratic, “that last woman, Ida Lee, was inside her home when she was killed.”  
_

_"Yes," _he interrupted with an almost growl, "_ you are no doubt exemplary at stating the facts."_

_"Let me finish,” I answered, “she was inside her home when she was killed, but why did no one in her block hear something? Granted, it was late, but someone could have potentially taken notice of him trying to break in. The area is not scarcely peopled, after all. It's residential. They_ all _have been so.”_

 _"_ _I doubt he broke in at all, Watson. No signs of it– not in the doors, not in their frames, not in the windows, not in the grounds, not in the skylights— and pray you believe me: I know a lock that has suffered tampering whenever I see one."_

_I nodded, because lock-picking was perhaps one of the most eccentric activities in which he occupied some of his spare time (excepting his more questionable experiments), but he had become impressively skilled in the task over the years. He continued._

_"_ _I also think that it is a distinct possibility that the victims never even heard him— there was_ absolutely _no struggle at all from any of them.”_

_"We cannot know that for sure, Holmes, can we?  But if that is correct, why did they not hear him?”_

" _Yes, we can. Remember the state of every victim's home: normality itself. No overturned books, no mess on the night tables or desks, no shattered glassware or strewn-about cutlery or clothes, and no violent marks on the furniture or floors. Perfect harmony.The bodies also would have been eloquent in that regard: no fractured or injured fingers or wrists, no broken fingernails, and nothing under the nail beds. That suggests the contact never went beyond civility before he struck and immobilised his victim, later torturing and drugging them into oblivion. As in a leopard's fruitful hunt, either the victims did not hear him at all, or they did not hear him until it was too late."_

_At these words, he then stood frozen on the spot, evidently having found a new train of thought. He breathed consciously. He gazed into empty space. He was motionless. But then came a shift in his demeanour, as he turned to me. A shift I had learnt to be the evidence of an epiphany. His grey eyes, icy blue under the sitting room light would suddenly make home to a rising gleam within, and his facial expression would comply gradually, conveying more than it routinely did: new knowledge and analysis, yes, but also an unmistakable light of boundless exuberance._

_Then he exclaimed, voice vibrant and full: “He must have struck first! That's it! Oh, my dear Watson, you are truly magnificent– you solved it!”_

_I remained in the dark, so I asked for an explanation._

_No response. Instead, he had walked across the room where I stood and, after draping a hand over my shoulder, he had kissed me, tenderness and heat alike upon his lips._

Having finished the last of my breakfast, I stood at the sink, carefully washing dish, spoon, fork and mug.  The cool water ran lazily over my hands as the soap accumulated on the bottom of the sink.

_"Why now?” I had said after the first few whirlwind, lost moments, attempting to avert disaster._

_“Adrenaline of a solved case,” was his simple response, tenderly delivered._

_"Is that all?”_

_“And a mutual interest never explored— but that is surely obvious.” With a whisper, he moved closer, his mouth against my neck, his lips and breath caressing it. “John, please think: why_ not _now?”_

_“I cannot fathom a single reason,” was my answer, the words nearly not finding their way out._

_Thus, with new resolve, his lips had been back on mine— demanding and intense._

I ran up to my room, hurriedly (it was half-past seven, now), to fetch the small bag I always took to work. It contained a few important papers (patient notes, surgical reports, and the like), and my stethoscope, which I never trusted to remain behind at the consulting rooms or at the hospital. It was a special cardiology unit given to me by my parents upon graduating. I ran my fingers over the latch of the bag before I fastened it, attempting to direct my mind elsewhere– trying to dilute my unreserved elation.

_"Do you not think this is a mistake?” I had breathed out amidst the growing urgency of fast, eager kisses. We were now in the kitchen, ever closer in our haphazard, stumbling approach of his bedroom. His right hand lay softly upon the back of my neck and his left upon my waist. My own hands were buried in his hair, lost in the feel of it._

_He had stopped and placed me at arm’s length, minutely examining my every motion. “Do_ you _?”_

_“No, but I asked you first.”_

_"Watson,” he said, after regaining his composure, “I am not a man who errs much.”_

_"I know that.”_

_“But if all mistakes were like this, I would fashion myself the most faithful human embodiment of error.”_

_This time, I had seized_ him _, and we had not stopped again._

I had to go back for my mobile. I crossed through the kitchen to the bedroom. He was still in peaceful slumber. I desired to speak to him or see his face before leaving, but a tender kiss on his head served my purpose now. He did not stir (frankly, I fail to see what I would have done had he done so). I returned to the sitting room, and up on the case wall, I noticed a bright light-green paper that was not there last night. In deep blue ink, it read:

 

          _My dearest John,_

> _I thank you for your invaluable aid on the present case. I must tell you, you were simply essential to me. You often are. Do you remember Hugh Bennett, the locksmith up the street from the house of the first victim?  He turned out to be a psychiatric patient with a previous arrest warrant. He escaped from Bethlem Royal Hospital a year ago, but he changed his name. He was known as Francis Miller, then. His diagnosis: Antisocial Personality Disorder + Bipolar Disorder. I saw it in him when we interviewed him, for some odd reason (absence of facial expressions and prosody in his speech, complete lack of empathy for the victims, etc.) and it plagued my mind as a possible connection. I researched him, but I dismissed the connection after the second and third murders because I simply didn't see a pattern. The great probability, as you know, is for serial killers to have a pattern. At the time, I did not conceive of the possibility that he would know the addresses somehow, or the victims. People often just get their copies made on site. But, thanks to you, I was able to form the firm hypothesis that he must have kept copies of all the keys he had made over the last few months. Obviously, he kept the addresses of the jobs he took on site, as well. That's what the victims had in common. That's what allowed for the relatively considerable territory of the murders across London. All he had to do was enter the victim’s home with their key, and he was free to torture his silent, restrained, sedated victims, and commit his murder. As we now know, he scuttled out through the last window instead of the door before anyone got to the source of the final gunshot. That was his mistake. He shot the final victim, too. Must have been panicking when she took her time dying. Someone would hear. If there had been a struggle, he wouldn't have had time to hide his tracks. So if a struggle did not, in fact, take place, in this case it could only mean someone with the key entered the victims' homes. At four o’clock this morning, I went to his shop with D.I. Lestrade. We found the keys, the records of the addresses of his victims, and apprehended the fellow at his home. Thank you._
> 
> _Very sincerely, and more than ever now, yours,_
> 
>  
> 
> _Sherlock Holmes_
> 
> _P.S. Take this note as an explanation of the case and as my protest at your having to work tomorrow."_

 

I wore a smile for the next moments as I descended the stairs. I stopped, hastily typed up a reply to his letter and sent it.

**Congratulations on the case.  At the moment, I despise every place that is not your bedroom and any company that is not you. Please sleep: I cannot remember the last time I was assured you had a full night’s rest. - J.W.**

I opened the door of 221 B. The scorching humidity of summer was already building, the fast warm air against my face.

_“How long?” I had asked mindlessly, my hands tugging hard at his shirt, his attempting to undo the buttons on my trousers. "How long have you wanted this? As long as I have?"_

_In a wordless but eloquent reply, his arm wrapped around my back and brought us tightly close, intense kisses being shared between us. He steadied his hands, one still on my back, the other one in my hair, and, with the smallest motion, set erratic pulses racing through my every nervous ending as his hips collided with mine. It–_ he _–  was pleasure incarnate._

_I had been effectively rendered speechless, my mind blanking out, short-circuiting without warning._

I hailed a cab and got in, asking to be taken to St. Bart’s. Stretching out my legs, I was in a state of unperturbed relaxation until I reached the hospital, with the unmistakable, beautiful sight of London flying past the window.

_Coming undone in his arms was completely unique. It had a rush of singular intensity I had never reached, an intoxicating closeness I had never believed possible, and it was, at its core, all-encompassing ecstasy. Pure release. I clawed at his back. I ceased breathing. I sweat and invoked the heavens with an incorporeal voice. I embraced him as close as I could, and simultaneously let out a curse. I think it fair to assume it felt much the same for him, when he himself was slowly deprived of the last remains of all control: his teeth found my right shoulder, his grip on me displayed its full strength, nails digging into my skin, and to hear him, it was obvious that he was focusing intently on recovering any sort of mastery over his breathing (mastery long since gone). A transitory stillness, an unprecedented heat in his last kiss, a loud breath choking back a groan, and I knew he had fallen, too. For some seconds, both of us were thoroughly unable to move._

_A few minutes of a silent London night passed in which we did nothing but recover our breaths and smile dumbly at each other. Both of us spent, this time it was he who asked, “Do you not think it strange?”_

_My wits recovered, I asked what he meant._

_"That I misjudged us.”_

_A hint of fear in my response. “In what way?”_

_His solemn tone remained throughout his response: “I believed... I was_ convinced _you would refuse me."_

_"Why?"_

_"The reasons abound. The first is, of course, I know your preferences. Women are to your taste--_ _men are not."_

 _I stayed silent. What would cause him to understand the crucial difference between all men, all of_ humanity _, and himself? How could I tell him that it was simply him, every moment of his brilliance and insight, every beat of his cautiously-hidden heart, every  one of his mannerisms and habits, even the irritating ones, and not his sex, that led to this?  I settled for looking him straight in the eye._

_"What?"_

_"But you are." I cleared my throat. "To my taste. No one, not one woman, better suited to it."_

_He smiled. "Is that a fact?"_

_"Yes." And_ _he seemed to understand_ _that it was an elemental truth that I, too, had felt helplessly locked in a cycle of doubt and so-much-more-than-love and desire._

At about nine o’clock, as I dressed for a surgery in which I was assisting, I received a message.

**Another case arose. Quadruple murder in Leeds. The victims are all dressed in authentic Nazi uniforms. The Police are clueless (as always). Most exciting. Interested? – S.H.**

Suddenly, I regretted my impulsive decision to take any shifts at the hospital at all. I was hit with a thoroughly unreasonable wave of hatred for money. I replied:

**I apologise– programmed surgery. Unfortunately engaged for the next four hours, at least. Also, I believe I asked you to sleep. - J.W.**

Two minutes later, his message arrived.

**Too thrilled about the case. Unable to sleep. Also experiencing a rise in sleep-depriving endorphins: Your fault. - S.H.**

A smile spread across my lips. Then, a few seconds later, I received another one:

**And I do believe you might see something of the case yet. It is only a question of where and when we will meet. – S.H.**

**Ah, endorphins. You are, no doubt, the master of excuses. We’ll meet whenever and wherever you like. - J.W.**

**Four o’clock, New Scotland Yard? – S.H.**

**Consider it done. - J.W.**

And that was our beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I apologise for the constant updates. The work is now complete. I might add a few things here and there, though, over time. - 9 March, 2014.  
> Yes, I changed the title. I like it better this way. - 19 July, 2015.


End file.
